ABOUT ME

Here’s my story…

Hi, my name is Hogan Chua. I am 25 years old, living in Melbourne Australia. I was once in your position, deciding to build my first website. And I was truly overwhelmed with all the different options and I built my first website on Wix (a free website builder). Although it was easy to use, but it was just too limiting and it didn’t do the things I wanted.

Then I switched over to WordPress and haven’t look back since. At first, there was a learning curve and I sort of quit, dabbled around with it for a couple of months but didn’t get far. I don’t think it was the Platform itself, but rather my mindset at that time. I wasn’t fully committed to my website and my business. I was testing a lot of free themes, although the demo looked great and seemed like what I was after. Again, I was frustrated because I couldn’t arrange the things I wanted.

Then I was at the point where I just wanted someone to build it for me, and it cost me $500. At the time, it was a big investment but now I look back at the site the developer made was actually very similar to what I could have done myself, if I could be bothered.

Well, that website didn’t get far either…the reason? a mix of procrastination, not knowing what to do and also other endeavours I had on the side. There was no focus, no dedication, no late nights to do whatever I could to learn and make it successful.

Then the day came, where I had to really build a website (for a local business) that I had done SEO for. I charged $thousands for the SEO and Website, so I sort of had to make it work no matter what.

Surprisingly, it didn’t take long for me to finally found what I was looking for all along. A Drag n Drop Website Builder for WordPress. It was a basic free theme, from Themify. But it included the builder which allowed me to arrange the content just where I wanted and make it SEO friendly.

I actually thought it was almost too good to be true because at one stage (when I hired the developer), I thought you needed to learn CSS and HTML to make a website look good. Which I’ve learn that you most certainly don’t!

Even though it was a Drag n Drop Builder, which is super easy to learn and use it still took about a month to fully finish off the site. The reason is because you’ve got to learn where all the buttons are, what each setting does, where to find images, how to crop it properly, creating content and also designing it so it looks great.

But it was so worth it!

Then I realised that there were actually tutorials on YouTube which showed you how to make a wordpress website. I think it must of popped up on my suggested videos or something. I saw all the tutorials, and none of them matched the quality of builder I was using.

I felt that people deserved better, because I personally have been there. Just completely frustrated with these free website builders and Free WordPress themes that didn’t allow you to expand.

So then I decided that I will make these tutorials with the best builder out there, contacted Themify. And they were kind enough to allow me to share their premium theme for free with everyone. We were both confident that people who used it, would love it and get the membership which includes 1 year support. And for those who are still unsure or on a budget, use it for free for as long as you want and even sell the website to a business.

And that actually brings me to another important point that many people don’t think about. With other tutorials on YouTube, alot of them are based on free themes which are not only seriously lacking in features but also you don’t have the option to get support, if you need help! You need to hire a developer from a freelancing website which would cost anywhere between $10/hr – $50/hr. So at minimum you’d be charged $10 for a small job. And these small fixes or customizations will slowly add up, I guarantee you that.

Whereas, if you decide to get support for 1 year, it would only be around $36/year for unlimited questions and problems. Which comes back at around $3/month. But again, you don’t need to but having that option there is so important for people who are serious about their websites or want to speed up the process.

How I truly feel about my tutorials and the builder…

The best way to describe to you why I made theses tutorial is to tell you a story cause who doesn’t love stories?

Imagine it was the end of the world. It is the year 2050 and the earth wasn’t getting any rain, oceans starting to dry up, plants and animals started to die. Humans were starving and diseases spreading. But for some reason, I had to go this dangerous place to save my family. No one had ever been there before. I had packed my bags, stocked up on bake beans, tuna, canned soup and headed north.

I had been trekking for over 3 months, it was a long journey and I shed almost 30 pounds. My eyes barely could open cause of the glare from the sun and I collapsed. I fell face first but I didn’t hear my head crack.

I had fallen onto a lush bed of green grass.

I finally, found it! A place where the earth still was raining, animals roaming freely, a mountain and a blue lake. A few days later, I was re-united with my family, who have been living in a farm house.

So naturally, after experiencing a place where there was no life. I couldn’t be more excited to go back to tell my friends about this new place.

Well, that’s how I feel about this builder and tutorial. I have tasted the pain, problems and frustrations and I just naturally feel good about sharing the good news.

I think we as humans (most of us) naturally want to share something great, funny, valuable with our friends. So one important thing I learn’t and want to pass to you, is that you should build a business/blog/website about solving a problem you faced before rather then tapping into the next “trend”. That way you are more motivated because you feel like you need to right the wrong.

Because I think that is where a lot of people are stuck, not because of the website building but because of selling a problem and solution that you have not fully experienced before!

That’s it. Try it, if you don’t like it – you haven’t paid a dime (obviously, you’ll need to get hosting and a domain name but you’ll need that regardless of which builder, tutorial you use.) But luckily, I do have a coupon code for both of those in the tutorial.